On Tuesday, Vivek Kundra, U.S. chief information officer, announced the launch of Apps.gov on The White House blog. Kundra credited Obama’s government innovation initiative as the reason for the new site.

CNN International has called Apps.gov the “App Store” for the government and the moniker doesn’t seem to be that far off. In the blog Kundra describes the site as “an online storefront for federal agencies to quickly browse and purchase cloud-based IT services.”

Most of you might be asking, as I did, what cloud-based means. Well, fortunately Kundra, and in my case the computer geniuses in my office, explained that cloud is the next step in IT.

Currently, most applications and the data provided by these apps are stored in two different locations. With cloud computing the data and the applications are stored in the same location and can be accessed more easily and online. That’s the simplified version.

The goal of Apps.gov is to provide a central location for federal employees to access applications used in the private sector while also saving the federal government money.

Government employees can theoretically cut through the bureaucratic red tape faster to find current technology solutions for their everyday jobs. What that means is that government agencies can theoretically work faster, more efficiently and save the taxpayers money.

The largest concern for everyone is online security and privacy. Kundra doesn’t address these problems until the end and really only in his conclusion, “Along the way, we will need to address various issues related to security, privacy, information management and procurement to expand our cloud computing services.”

Overall it seems like another great step towards progress. The government is finally looking towards the private sector for tech innovations. Hopefully these changes will continue to be made and the government will catch up with the private sector and hopefully they address the security and privacy issues sooner rather than later.